


Unreservedly

by VerdantMoth



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Love Bites, M/M, Rough Kissing, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-04
Updated: 2018-09-04
Packaged: 2019-08-23 16:01:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16622036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VerdantMoth/pseuds/VerdantMoth
Summary: You are on your knees before Merlin. It’s not a place you are accustomed to. You have never been one to bow, whether to mortal or divine.





	Unreservedly

You are on your knees before Merlin. It’s not a place you are accustomed to. You have never been one to bow, whether to mortal or divine. Have never felt comfortable enough to sink to your knees, to lower your head and avert your eyes. To offer your neck to someone and give them that power.

Merlin though, Merlin you trust. Even as his hands curl under your jaw, as his fingers press against your neck. As the magic you once abhorred in him tremors through the air and drips against your skin. Fizzy and warm and all too bright. It tingles, burns, makes your shoulders numb and your fingers stiff. He pours into you though, settles around you.

Merlin smiles and the day explodes even as the moon reaches his peak, glimmers against a starless sky. You think this is where you’re meant to smile back, to assure him you are still here and present and willing, but your mind is cloudy, is foggy.

You’ve heard rumors of the people in the wood, of the magic grass that causes visions and blurs eyes. When your chest leaves your body, when you float above everything, even as your skin tightens, clings to your bones, you think you understand the appeal of burning grass. Something warn slides down the side of your neck, weighs heavy on your shoulder. Something calloused brushes across your tongue, pushes past your lips and against your cheek.

You bite, hard, and Merlin hisses above you. Yanks his hands away and glowers. You feel sheepish, but you do not let him see. You do not give him that satisfaction. You  _ hate  _ the way he makes you lose control. He sighs, sinks to his own knees. Cups your face in his hands and leans in until his curls brush your brow, until the warmth of his forehead sears into your own.

You get lost in his eyes then, in the way the blue glows under the lamps, a weird and sheer gold that frightens you as much as it intrigues you, as much as it pools like slush in your belly. Long silk lashes do not quite brush you as he blinks, slow. As he closes his eyes and breaths against you a spicy-sweet air that sets fire to your lungs.

“Tell me, lover. Do you trust me?” He does not open his eyes, does not look at you. You are not even sure he asked  _ you  _ the question. It is asked so quietly it drifts between the wood panelling, gets lost somewhere in the shredded rug.

You do not answer. Instead you lift leaden hands to fit them under his homespun shirt. To trace the lean edges of his belly, cut them against the sharp lines of his hips. He is fire beneath your skin, burning into your hands until they melt against his flesh. Or maybe his flesh is melting against you. Once, you thought him elfin, waifish. And then your fingers got lost in the coarse forest up his belly, across his chest. The only indication he gives that he feels you is the faintest tightening of his stomach, the quietest inhale.

Sometimes, oftentimes, this is when he shoves you away. When he slips through your fingers like sand and vanishes between one heartbeat and the next. Tonight though, you can tell he will linger. He will curl against your side and trace constellations into your back. Tonight he will leave a purple chain against your collarbone, and fingerprints inside your thighs. In the morning, you might even wake to his shuffling breath, to a kiss that taste foul, but lingers.

“Do you trust me, my lover?”

You love him. With every single fiber of who you are, who you were meant to be. You would deny your duty for a second spent in his presence. Would denounce kingdom and king, would turn the world to ash for the honor of his touch.

You have defied all expectation, denied yourself your birthright for him. And still he hesitates before you. Still he wonders why you bow. You kiss him then, grab him by his ears and pulls his face to yours. Kissing has always been a battle of wills between you two. Hard presses, sharp bites. A copper taste that’s become your favorite. You kiss him until your chest constricts, until your lungs ache and your head pounds, and lights burst behind your eyes. You can feel him beginning to pull away, can feel his heartbeat separating from yours and you chase him as far as you can.

It is only when you begin to sway that you let him go, that you suck in the cool night air and taste winter creeping in.

His eyes are dark and his lips swollen, spit slick. He traces the swell of your cupid’s bow, leans in and licks his own flavor from your chin. You pull him up, pull him to bed. A soft mattress, an old blanket. He lets you arrange him on his side, lets you settle against his back. Your knees are tangled in his, your chest sticks to his back. Your chin fits over his shoulder, shoves his dark strands into your nose, your mouth, but you don’t mind. As best you can you sling your arm over his waist, pull him close. You’re trying hard, so hard, to make you both one. To pull until there is no him, no you. No beginning, no end.

You know that the sun will come up, that he will slip into his duties, his responsibilities. That the weight that you spun away tonight will burden his shoulders tomorrow. His back will curl and his eyes will bruise. You can do nothing for him, nothing to prevent it.

Because you have your own expectations to uphold. Your own load to carry. Your shoulders will droop with all you must accomplish, and by day’s end you will feel smaller than you ever have.

But he will come back to you; or you will seek him out again. Always circling each other until the pull becomes too much, until you will be denied no longer.

One day, he will bow before you. One day, it will be his knees against the wood grain, his hands that shake and his breath that stutters. One day, the silver band he keeps hidden behind his mother’s portrait will weigh against your finger. And you can be patient until then, can play the game. You can share him now, because when that day arrives you, and you alone, will possess him, the way he has so long been sole owner of you, body and soul.

So when he sighs, when he shifts against you, when he turns his head as much as possible, you kiss his cheek. And when he asks, begs,  _ implores  _ with a fear you understand all too well, “Lover, do you trust me?”

You whisper in his ear “Unreservedly.”

  
  



End file.
